Due to the Christmas and New Year's Holidays there will be no weekly Rotary meetings on December 24 and 31. However, we will meet Tuesday morning for the usual weekly meetings on December 2, 9 and 16. In addition there will be the Rotary Holiday Party hosted by Past President Bill Kiehnbaum and his wife Jean on Wednesday, December 18, from 5:30-8 pm at their Shoreview home. Please bring your spouse or significant other to the Kiehnbaums' for some holiday cheer and hors d'oeuvres.
In keeping with the Rotary motto of Service Above Self club Rotarians helped package food the for the Thanksgiving holiday at the Ralph Reeder Food Shelf on November 25. Club members will also be ringing bells for the Salvation Army at the Arden Hills Cub Food Store on December 4 and 5. Both community service projects are ways Rotarians help those less fortunate who are struggling during the holidays. Thanks to Charlie Oltman for arranging the food packing and Mark Stange for setting up the annual bell ringing.
December is also the month our club votes on the leadership team for the 2020-21 Rotary year. The best way to enjoy and benefit from your membership in Rotary is to participate in club activities and to take on leadership roles when asked to volunteer. The nominating committee members are Past President Bill Kiehnbaum, 2019-20 President Elect Glenn Bowers and me. Please say "yes" if asked by one of us to take on a leadership role for the next Rotary year.
DUE TO THE HOLIDAYS, THERE WILL NOT BE CLUB MEETINGS ON EITHER DECEMBER 24 OR 31.
On December 3, we will hear from Hannah Parish of Solid Ground where she is the Volunteer Program Manager. Solid Ground is an organization that helps families break the cycle of homelessness and poverty for the next generation. Solid Ground now runs six programs in suburban Ramsey and Washington Counties housing nearly 400 women, men and children annually.
Hannah has over 9 years of experience in program management and nonprofit organizations. She holds her Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology from the University of St. Thomas.
Hannah also runs the Santa Shop for Solid Ground—a holiday store stocked with donated gifts and toys where parents can experience the pride of picking out the perfect present for their child. She will tell us about the great work Solid Ground is doing, an upcoming event, and ways people can support this work.
Our speaker on December 10 is Jill Seward. She is the National Executive Director Nursing, Chief Nursing Officer at Hazelden Betty Ford. Jill joined Hazelden Betty Ford in September 2015, previously serving as director of Nursing and Client Management at The Emily Program. Before The Emily Program, Jill held several nursing and clinical leadership roles at St. John's Hospital in Minnesota.
Jill received her bachelor's degree in nursing from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and received her master's degree in Nursing: Leadership and Administration from Capella University.
Jill will introduce you to her work at Hazelden Betty Ford and describe the tremendous good they are doing across the nation by helping individuals defeat their personal addiction.
December 17 brings us Dana Healy from CTV North Suburbs. CTV North Suburbs is hyper focused on their served community—a different approach from a mainstream production house. Partnering with local businesses, grants, and agencies, they identify and bring media attention to important community issues, events and activities. Media project examples range from documentaries about World War II veterans, to updates about recycling programs in the city.
Seventeen students began the curriculum at the Sewing School in Amaravathi, India when the Sewing School was opened in May 2019 in the village of Amaravathi, a rural area in the Guntur District of the new state of Andhra Pradesh. Ten of these students have completed the curriculum and 6 or 7 of the students will continue to work on completing the curriculum and ten new student have now started their studies of the curriculum.
Our partner in this project, Pushpa, a U.S. based 501c3 non-profit organization located in Arden Hills, operates in India as a not for profit Non-Governmental Organization (NGO). Pushpa has been working in India for fourteen years.
Pushpa's mission is to help marginalized community members of rural Guntur district villages transition from migrant, subsistent lifestyles, dependent on seasonal labor and temporary shelter, to sustainable livelihoods in healthy communities. Its main goal is to work together with underprivileged (tribal) members of rural Guntur district villages to motivate socio-economic change in small ways, one person, one family, one student, at a time, through projects in which the recipients themselves participate. The organization strives to boost the self-confidence of individuals while at the same time teaching collective responsibility for the community, through teaching vocational skills that develop earning capability.
As many of you were aware, Gummadi Franklin, the driving force behind PUSHPA, was in country when the grant was received and was due to be coming home in a couple of weeks. He and his team were able to find a suitable location for the school and an experienced teacher for the school in anticipation of our receipt of our District Grant. All of the work to equip the school has been completed and the school has been established in Amaravathi and 16 students are now working to complete the teaching protocol that has been established for completion of the sewing training program.
One of the elders in Amaravathi is pictured below after he was given the honor of cutting the green ribbon in a ceremony for the opening of the school.
The picture below shows some of the students using the treadle sewing machines in the third floor sewing lab at the sewing school in Amaravathi.
The leaders of PUSHPA, both here in Arden Hills and in Andhra Pradesh, India are especially grateful for the support for the new sewing school from the Arden Hills Shoreview Rotary Club and Rotary District 5960 and have expressed their gratitude privately and acknowledge the Club’s sponsorship of the new school by erecting the sign shown in the picture below.
A lot of hard work went into obtaining this grant and there are many people to thank for their hard work and significant contributions. PUSHPA has now taken the baton and it is especially gratifying to see it take the first turn in the establishment of the new school, completing all the initial steps required to establish the new school in Amaravathi in such a short period of time.
We and Pushpa are thankful to the following Rotary Clubs for their generous support of our project: Belle Plaine; Brooklyn Park; Forrest Lake; Fridley Columbia Heights; New Brighton Mounds View; Prior Lake; Roseville; St. Croix Falls; St. Paul No. 10; Siren Webster; West St. Paul Mendota Heights; and White Bear Lake.
The club welcomed visiting Rotarian Ron Hughes from Excelsior and Bill Nielson from St. Paul. The newest Club member Dave Newman gave a brief classification talk noting that he is a recovering attorney who now works in residential real estate for the Bancor Group real estate company. They have developed more than 2500 lots in the Twin Cities area. He has been involved with Rotary for many years and is excited to be joining the Arden Hills/Shoreview club. He has been active with the Fast for Hope program.
The guest speaker was Christine Noonan who has been working in marketing and guest relations for the Minnesota State Fair since 2011. She noted that the State Fair began in 1859, before Minnesota was a state as a means to promote agriculture. In 1885 the Ramsey County Poor Farm closed and 220 acres were acquired and become the permanent home of the State Fair. The Fairgrounds is now 322 acres. They have not received any government assistance since 1949. The State Fair takes in about $57 million in revenue and annually invests about $6-7 million in capital improvements to the Fairgrounds. Christine showed a number of pictures of the fairgrounds and fairgoers and then answered a number of questions from club members. She even responded to one question asking why Sweet Martha's cookies are so popular and overated - (personal opinion - they are not overrated and they bring in more than $4 million annually in sales. By far the largest food vendor at the Fair.)
November is "Foundation Month" in Rotary. With that in mind, we were happy to welcome Paul Hofslien as our guest speaker today. Paul is a professional money manager with Hofslien Wealth Services in Prior Lake. He has been with the Prior Lake Rotary Club for 24 years and currently serves on the Foundation support committee for Rotary District 5960. Our club has been recognized the past few years as one of the top clubs in our district in terms of per-capita giving and even total giving to the Foundation. But we can do more! Paul's presentation helped clarify the direct link between member gifts and the manner in which this money comes back to our district to help fund the work of individual clubs seeking support for local or global projects. The Rotary Foundation has consistently been rated one of the top Foundations in the world in terms of efficiency and effectiveness and is truly the engine that drives all the good work of Rotary around the world, including the near eradication of polio from the face of the earth. The are many good reasons to make it our "charity of choice" and many ways this can be accomplished, including recurring monthly or annual gifts or bequests upon death.
The club welcomed visiting Rotarian Bill Nielson from the St. Paul club since has not yet gone south to get out of the cold. It was announced that the club party would be held on Wednesday, December 18th at Bill and Jean Kiehnbaum's home.
The guest speakers were Melissa Cuff, Director of Development, Marketing and Communications for the Conservation Corps and Cari Wallin, who is currently working for the Conservation Corps. The Conservation Corps is the modern day program that was originally started in the 1930's to put people to work during the Great Depression. The current Conservation Corps mission is to provide hands-on environmental stewardship and service learning opportunities to youth and young adults while accomplishing conservation, natural resource management and emergency response work. The goal is to connect young people to the environment and prepare them for future employment.
The Conservation Corps currently has four programs: young adult field crew program, summer youth camp program, youth outdoors after school program, and an individual placement program. The CC partners with 200 different agencies to do projects. Cari talked about her experience in the program and shared some of her thoughts about the positive impact that it has had on her and others in the program. She also coined the phrase "nerding out" to describe what she does, which was very cool.
Today's speaker was Kelley Leaf, a supervisor in the Hennepin County Guardian Ad Litem (GAL) program, where she has worked for 16 years. She is also the current president of CASA MN, the non-profit associated with the GAL program. She has a master’s degree in social work and is a Licensed Graduate Social Worker. A GAL is a child's advocate in court. They work collaboratively with other professionals in the court system. They consider a child's culture, race, gender, religion, physical, mental and emotional needs as well as short and long term concerns to help make recommendations for the child's best interest. A GAL is required by law to be appointed in all child protection cases in court in MN. In most cases, these individuals are volunteers but must meet a number of requirements and participate in training sessions in order to take on this important role. The GAL is expected to attend every court hearing, may testify as a witness. and make reports and recommendations for the cases assigned to them. Judges have tough decisions to make in these cases and they need eyes and ears in the community to see what is really happening with these kids.
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November is "Foundation Month" in Rotary. With that in mind, we were happy to welcome Paul Hofslien as our guest speaker today. Paul is a professional money manager with Hofslien Wealth Services in Prior Lake. He has been with the Prior Lake Rotary Club for 24 years and currently serves on the Foundation support committee for Rotary District 5960. Our club has been recognized the past few years as one of the top clubs in our district in terms of per-capita giving and even total giving to the Foundation. But we can do more! Paul's presentation helped clarify the direct link between member gifts and the manner in which this money comes back to our district to help fund the work of individual clubs seeking support for local or global projects. The Rotary Foundation has consistently been rated one of the top Foundations in the world in terms of efficiency and effectiveness and is truly the engine that drives all the good work of Rotary around the world, including the near eradication of polio from the face of the earth. The are many good reasons to make it our "charity of choice" and many ways this can be accomplished, including recurring monthly or annual gifts or bequests upon death.